


Infectious

by bitterbones



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Comfort Sex, F/M, Force Bond, Loss of Virginity, Medical Jargon, Post TLJ, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 21:27:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14434431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterbones/pseuds/bitterbones
Summary: “No,” Rey laces her fingers through his own, “I’m not angry. I needed you and you came.”Her other hand rises slowly from her side, and she reaches tentatively for his face. Ben leans into her gentle touch, and she swipes at his tears with her thumb before tracing along the silvery line of his scar.“When I reached out to you through the bond, I told you that I regretted not taking your hand that day, in the throne room. I meant it.”Ben believes that the bond is gone, shattered on Crait. Then one night it is blasted open again. Rey reaches out to him, sick and dying. Delirious with fever she pleads with him to come to her.She needs him. What can he do but go to her side?She needs him





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for this prompt (it got a little out of hand): "Prompt: hope it's not too long, After the end of the last Jedi, Rey cuts the connection between her and Kylo. Some time passes without them connecting again and Kylo feels as though the bond is gone for good. Then, one evening while he's alone in his room, the bond re-emerges, turns out Rey is really sick and reached out to him subconsciously, she sees him, but is pretty sure it's a dream, so she's very honest and apologizes, and confesses that she wished she'd stayed, she's sorry she couldn't."

He sits in this quarters, the chill of the cycled air raising gooseflesh on his pale skin, still damp from his shower. 

Kylo Ren has never felt so alone. He has won more victories than he ever thought possible. Since his ascension there have been countless minor skirmishes and ten major battles, all of which he has taken, some by the skin of his teeth and others by margins that are almost unfair. 

So much success and so little to show for it. His conquered territories submit only to appease him and waylay the might of his order, and those that still stand in defiance openly spew vitriol and lies. 

Once he wins, he tells himself, they will see. They will understand his vision and assist in his effort to attain it. Conditions may be less than satisfactory for the time being, but only due to the intensity of the war effort. If his incorporated worlds would just _obey_ instead of undermining him at every turn, they might find themselves under considerably less strain. 

For the time being he must persist in the face of mounting adversity; the payoff will be worth the strife. A catharsis will come, and when it does all those who opposed him will come to love him, to understand his vision. He _knows._

There is only one thing in the universe that seems to elude him. With all of his power and military prowess he will soon own the galaxy, but still there remains one thing he cannot have. Not unless it, _she_ , chooses to come to _him_. 

But she is gone. Their bond severed at Crait, he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of her since. With the raising of the Falcon’s ramp and the hydraulic _hiss_ of the door sliding shut, Rey had effectively stifled any hope Ben may have had for contacting her; except through official, diplomatic means.

Nearly all diplomatic ties between the Resistance and The First Order have been cut. 

Ben is entirely and hopelessly alone. 

Then it happens, all sound is sucked from his chambers. His breathing echoes and his heartbeat is thunderous in the quiet. He knows what this is, but he doesn’t understand how. 

He sees her there, across the room from him. Rey is prostrate, lying on her side and clutching her knees to her chest. Her breath is quick and shallow and her brow shines with sweat, wisps of hair are pasted to her cheeks and forehead. 

She watches him, eyes glassy and uncertain, almost afraid. 

“Ben?” He winces at the hoarseness of her voice. 

Rey is sick, very sick. Her heartbeat is too quick and her lungs struggle to keep pace.

“Rey.” His approach is tentative, he doesn’t want to frighten her into shutting him out, he just wants… he doesn’t know what he wants. 

Rey shifts, her knees dropping from her chest and her fingers extending weakly towards him. 

“A dream,” she whispers. 

Her depth perception must be hindered, she thinks that she has touched him, and that he is nothing more than an illusion, a creation of her fevered mind. 

He doesn’t deny it, if he makes it known that he is real and not some spectre of repressed longing she may very well cut him off again. 

“ _Ben_ ,” tears well in her eyes, he realizes now that the whites of them are jaundiced, his stomach drops. Rey is _very_ sick. 

“Ben,” she whimpers. Her voice is small and he draws nearer so he won’t miss a word, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

He doesn’t speak, hoping beyond hope that she may reveal some detail of her location so that he might go to her. With medical resources being diverted to the war effort combined with her affiliation with the losing side, her care may not be adequate. 

“ _I should have gone with you_.” She is openly crying now, face blotchy and red with something beyond sickness, “I miss you. I’m so alone.” 

He opens his mouth to intercede, but she isn’t done.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t. I didn’t see another way, you were going to kill them. I had to go to them. I think, maybe, part of me thought I could return to you once I’d gotten them off of Crait… that was foolish. If I had stayed maybe— 

Rey breaks into a fit of violent coughing. her chest heaves and her eyes bulge and blood spatters the pillow on which she rests her head. 

Ben goes to her then, closing the distance between them in two long strides and he collapses to his knees beside her, they crack on the hard floor but he is beyond feeling. 

“Rey,” he croaks, he’s crying too, “Rey where are you?” 

He doesn’t need to ask twice. She reaches for him, taking one of his large hands into both of her small ones. Her skin is pale and clammy, joints prominent. _She’s too thin_. 

Touch causes him to manifest physically at her location, just as it had on Ahch-To, and he instantly recognizes her surroundings. 

She’s in an open air room. Large bay windows flung open on all sides, letting in fresh, spring air and midday sunlight. The bed on which she lays isn’t hospital issue, but a large queen sized mattress adorned in sheets of red samite and blankets of woven wool. 

He knows this room. It had been his mother’s once, in a manse on Chandrila, not far from Hanna City and Leia’s beloved senate. 

Where are the doctors? The medical droids? The heart monitor and the IV fluids? Why is Rey being allowed to flounder like this? She’s _dying_. Can her friends not see that she needs help?

“Hold on,” he whispers, low, thick, and laden with promise, “I’m coming, Rey.” 

This time it is he who severs their connection, but only so he can focus on the task at hand. He dons his tunic and cloak and strides out into the cold, monotonous halls of _The FInalizer_ , his new flagship. 

Ben accosts the first officer he encounters. 

“Prepare a transport immediately,” he demands, “One with a medical bay. Bring a medic and a med droid. Have it ready for launch in fifteen minutes, and set the course for Chandrila.”

✱

It takes a day to reach Chandrila, his planet of birth. Once it may have triggered an onslaught of painful memories— the first stroke of Snoke’s twisted fingers over his young mind, his father coming and going again and again, his mother’s daily absences filled inadequately by nanny droids and strangers fussing over him— but Ben is focused. Nothing matters beyond Rey.

In the day it had taken them to reach her, he had extended his mind towards her own multiple times; each time was worse than the last. All he found was incoherent, fevered static and animal fear. Rey thinks that she is dying, and she very well may be.

Beyond his own fear something else boils inside of him, festering like an open wound, _anger_. Why has the Resistance allowed Rey’s illness to progress to such a dire point? Is her affliction untreatable? Where is his mother?

Only one of those questions seems to be of any import as they storm the manse. _Can this disease be treated?_

It’s too easy to seize, only a skeleton staff of loyal maids and custodians walk the halls along with a few poorly trained security guards. Most of them throw up their hands in surrender when they see The Supreme Leader sweeping through their home with a platoon of stormtroopers in tow. He pretends not to recognize their faces, ignores their soft, incredulous whispers of ‘ _Ben’_.

He is Kylo Ren now, yet he has felt like Ben since he saw Rey in his quarters, lying, dying in that bloodstained bed. He feels helpless, like a child, like Ben Solo.

When he and his squadron reach the wing in which his family used to reside the atmosphere shifts drastically. There are armed guards stationed at every door and every bend, equipped with blasters and shock batons alike. They all wear the smooth arching symbol of the Resistance somewhere on their person, and he knows his mother must be here.

And then he feels her, _them_. Rey and Leia Organa-Solo, what should be two infinitely shining spots of radiance against the force, but Rey is dim, weak and growing weaker.

He cuts down the external guards with a blade of crimson fury and kicks in the hard, wooden door.

Leia doesn’t turn to face him, but he can see the slump of her shoulders and hear the grief in her breath. There are others in the room with her, the pilot and the traitor and a small, unfamiliar woman who hangs close to the defector’s side.

The pilot, _Poe_ , reaches for his blaster, but Leia raises a hand to stop him.

“Don’t. You’ll lose.”

“I will n—

“Poe!” Ben winces, it’s been so long since he’s heard his mother raise her voice. She sounds tired, vocal chords withered and worn by time and suffering, “ _Put it down_.” 

She turns, slowly, and faces her son.

The tension goes out of his muscles when he sees her. This tiny woman poses no threat to him. He lowers his saber to his side, and flicks it back into its restless sleep. She looks haggard, her eyes puffy with tears and lips sealed in a thin, trembling line.

“You’ve come to take her?” She asks. 

“She reached out to me through the Force, she needs me.” Anger swells again and his volume increases as he continues, he spits with the intensity of his words “Why is she so sick? Why has she not been hospitalized? What the fuck is she doing here?!” 

“Ben—

“Tell me!”

His saber comes alive again, spitting and crackling. Poe raises his blaster and edges forward, ready to put Ben down like a mad dog. Leia stays them both with a quivering hand. 

“We lost her, she left to track down some artifact and never returned. We thought that she was dead, or captured by you. I only received the call that she had come here two nights ago,” she gives an exasperated sigh, the crimson flicker of his saber does little to mask the weariness that grips her so tightly, “We came as quickly as we could, there’s a medical transport on its way. As to how she found this place, your guess is as good as mine.”

Ben disengages his saber again and offers it to the trooper to his left. The closest thing to a peace offering the present rebel scum will get from him.

“Move.” 

Leia steps aside, and Poe shifts uneasily.

He hits his knees beside the bed, not caring who witnesses this moment of vulnerability.

He doesn’t bother with words when Rey is so clearly beyond them. Her skin is sweat slick and clammy, eyes opened and glassy but beholding nothing, their whites still hopelessly jaundiced. Dried blood is caked to her lips and is speckled around her mouth and nose.

_She is dying._

Ben presses into her mind. It isn’t difficult, but what lies beyond her crumbling walls is a mess of suffering and grief. Sorting through it is near unbearable, she seems to be reliving every moment of strife and anguish she has ever experienced, _all at once_. Finding what he needs is nigh on impossible.

_Rey_. He reaches for her, she’s still there somewhere. _Rey, please, I need to know why you came here to this place, I need to know how this happened_.

She shifts on the mattress and he feels the weight of her consciousness shift as well, forward, towards lucidity. She nudges a scant few memories towards him and withers again.

They aren’t comprehensive by any means, only snapshots and rushes of visceral emotion. A planet, swampy and unfamiliar, rife with death and rot. The first wave of violent coughing and blood on her curled fist. Fear, raw and animal. Instinct tempered through years of isolation on Jakku. The ill are meant to self quarantine, to hide themselves away like wounded animals and die. That is what she knows, even now.

Then the final thought, more whole than the rest. Delirious with fever she had searched for something, _anything_ that could give comfort, and the manse had called out to her. There she could be alone, but within there had still lain a piece of someone she cared for, something she could cling to in those dying hours.

_Him_.

His eyes snap open and he reels away from her, careening backward and barely catching himself before he hits the floor.

Rey had come here to die alone, but in a place that held significance to him.

She seems to be looking at him now, no longer lost to fever and delirium.

Her lips shape the words more than speak them, “Ben, _I’m afraid_.”

She’s frightened. Rey is scared to die. 

He rises, shaking with grief, desperation, and rage.

“I’m taking her.” He bites out, words short and terse. 

“No you aren’t!” Poe fires and Ben raises his hand, fingers curled like pointed talons. The bolt catches in the air and hangs, quivering between them with restrained energy. 

Ben swallows hard, grappling for composure, “What can you do for her that I cannot do better? I have access to the finest facilities and physicians in the galaxy. What have you got left? A ragtag group of vagabonds and lowlives cowering in the mid and outer rim, flinging vitriol and lies as the galaxy slips from your grasp. You have nothing to offer her, and I have _everything_.”

Leia sucks in a breath as Ben lifts Rey off of the mattress, as though she thinks the girl will shatter in his grip. 

But Ben is gentle, and he can’t help but press a chaste kiss to the crown of her head. Her hair is matted and foul smelling. He hardly seems to notice.

Through it all the blaster bolt is suspended and the world waits with bated breath.

“Okay,” Leia whispers, almost amiably “Take her. Rey was never ours to begin with. She always wanted you.” 

Approval, that was all he had ever wanted from his mother, approval and love. He senses both of them now, rolling off of her in despondent waves. Love, approval, and a sort of muted pride. Not at what he has become, but at the way he carries Rey with such care and reverence.

It’s too little too late. He leaves, diverting the bolt’s path _just so_ , and it collides with the wall just above the pilot’s handsome head. Plaster rains down on him and he coughs and curses, distracted just long enough for Ben to ghost from the room unhindered, with his love cradled in his arms.

✱

The transport is chill, and Rey shivers against him as he lowers her gingerly onto the in-ship hospital bed. The medics rush to stabilize her and he steps aside, watching them work from a respectful distance.

It is only once he hears the raggedness of his own breathing that he reaches upward and finds tears streaking over his cheeks. He rushes to his personal quarters, desperate to hide this break, and cries himself to sleep for the first time since he was twenty-two with a padawan braid in his hair.


	2. Chapter 2

He spends every waking moment at her side— resting moments as well, spent slumped in a less than comfortable, steel framed cot— or as close to her side as the medical staff will allow. 

For the first week of her stay on _The Finalizer_ , Rey is kept in a quarantine unit. Ben can only watch her from behind a pane of heavy glass. The lead medic says she is ill with a virus that is yet unknown to modern medicine, a rarity, likely acquired on an unexplored, uncivilized planet. 

“If she wakes up,” he comments offhandedly, “I’ll have to inquire as to where she was when she first presented with symptoms, this is a pathogen worth learning more about.” 

Ben hardly hears the second half of the statement, still caught on _‘if’_. Another reminder that nothing is certain, that Rey still teeters precariously on the edge of death. 

Again, he spirals into a fit of rageful despair. He is forcibly removed from the medbay after he rends a ventilator in two.

Days stretch on into a week, and finally she is moved from quarantine into a private room, per The Supreme Leader’s request, and he is able to touch her. The bloody cough has stopped and her skin has regained some color. He holds her hand and pushes her greasy hair away from her eyes, fluttering restlessly behind their sallow lids. 

And he waits. 

Rey is a master of waiting, he knows. So many years wasted away on Jakku, waiting and waiting and waiting. Waiting for a family that was long dead, perhaps buried nearby, so close that she could have found them had she dug deep enough. 

Waiting for nothing. 

Waiting for destiny. 

Waiting for Ben.

So now he waits for her, gladly. He’d wait a thousand years if it meant she would come back to him healthy and unharmed. 

He shirks all duty, leaving the war to Hux and the rest of his leadership. Suddenly the fight means nothing to him. If Rey dies, none of it will have meant a damn thing, nothing will have mattered, or ever will matter again. 

The first time she wakes his heart nearly bursts from his chest in a mix of immutable joy and sudden anxiety. What will she think? Will she understand why he has brought her here? _Will she hate him for it?_

The first thing she does is deceptively mundane, she asks for water. They have kept her hydrated with intravenous fluids, but her lips are still chapped and cracking, and her throat is hoarse. 

Ben calls for a service droid, and it arrives almost immediately. No water, only ice chips for now. She doesn’t complain, just runs a watery shard over her lips and then crunches down on it contentedly. Then she takes another and repeats.

Through a mouth of cracking ice she inquires, weakly, “Are we on _The Finalizer_?”

Ben swallows hard and gives a stiff nod, gauging her reaction. 

She pauses, considering, then asks, “I don’t remember much. I know I went to Chandrila, and that I... I reached out to you through the bond. But after that...” 

“I came for you,” he whispers, and he falls to his knees at her bedside, gathering a small, gaunt hand in his own, unable to contain the onslaught of emotion “How could I not? You needed me. I came for you just as my mother and her Resistance dogs had arrived.” 

He spits the word mother like venom on his tongue and Rey winces. 

“Please don’t—

“I’m sorry.” For the first time since she arrived, as she shifts and pushes the thin blanket away, he sees how she has deteriorated. The papery material of her gown does little to hide the shape of her body; angular and boney. Her ribs and hips are disturbingly prominent. Her skin is taut over her high cheekbones, and her fingers are nothing but joint and hard column. 

His tone softens, and his knuckles ghost over the cold skin of her bicep. “You were so sick, Rey,” his voice cracks, and his face is wet with _something_ , “You were delirious, and so afraid. You reached out to _me_ , and no one else. Even with your friends there, in the room with you, you asked me to help you. You showed me your pain, where you got sick, why you were hiding, _why you chose that place_.” 

She tenses under his touch at the admission. He knows that she longed for him, still longs for him, just as he sought after and seeks her. They belong together. The entirety of this dire situation has made that abundantly clear. 

“Are... are you angry?” He sounds like a child, voice grating to his own ears, quavering and thick with tears. 

“No,” Rey laces her fingers through his own, “I’m not angry. I needed you and you came.” 

Her other hand rises slowly from her side, and she reaches tentatively for his face. Ben leans into her gentle touch, and she swipes at his tears with her thumb before tracing along the silvery line of his scar. 

“When I reached out to you through the bond, I told you that I regretted not taking your hand that day, in the throne room. I meant it.”

✱

After another week she is released into his care. For a terrible moment as they step out into the cold, cycled air of the the star destroyer’s labyrinthine halls, he fears that she will ask to leave, leave and return to the Resistance, return to certain death.

But she doesn’t.

“Where will I be staying?” The question is cautious and loaded with implications. Where he chooses to place her will determine her status within his order, should she choose to remain. Ben has long since made this decision. 

“You’ll be staying in my chambers,” he says, measured, careful not to frighten the girl, “With me.” 

“...with you.” She tests the words on her tongue, and he can see her weighing their meaning in the lines of her face, the flash of her honey eyes. 

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, Okay.”

When they reach his quarters he is overcome by a sudden rush of insecurity. The room is clean, too clean, nary a speck of dirt on the floor and not a single piece of ornamentation to don its dark walls. It feels cold, sterile. The sparseness of it shows how impersonal the space is, how unlived in. 

Then there’s the matter of the bed. Neatly made with dark blankets and linens; by all means it is ordinary and unimposing, but it is the only bed, or piece of furniture fit to sleep on, for that matter. 

His intentions are made abundantly clear by this one detail. 

“It’s dark,” she comments, half in jest, “Could I maybe... get some plants? Maybe some paintings to hang on the walls?”

Ben is blindsided by her nonchalance. He had expected her to protest this arrangement, to demand her own rooms or worse; demand to be relinquished back into the care of his mother. Rey wants to live with him. 

“Are we going to share the bed?”

“Yes... unless you would prefer—

“I want to share the bed.”

“I—” He stutters and flushes as she takes to walking the space, examining each minute detail with childlike curiosity, “Of course you can decorate. Are... you want to stay?” 

She stops with her fingers halfway across the smooth, dark wood of his dresser. 

“Ben,” she levels him a cutting glare, “I’m done running.”

✱

Rey is far more brazen than he, it would seem.

He wakes halfway through the night cycle to find her curled into his side, a too-thin arm slung haphazardly over his broad chest. Shirtless, her fingers drift dangerously close to his left nipple, and he is acutely aware of her warm breath tickling his ear. 

Still gaunt from her illness, yet she maintains a steadfast beauty. She emanates an aura of determination and strength, and her body feels like a space heater beside his own. He knows it isn’t fever, he had demanded she take her temperature before bed. Normal. Baseline. Ordinary. She is going to be okay.

He can’t imagine a galaxy without Rey in it, what it would look like, what it would _feel_ like. If the bond had remained shuttered, and Rey perished alone in that house, would he have even noticed? 

He thinks so; even in that lull of silence, there had been a tension, a subtle proof that Rey still breathed and fought against his every military action. Had that cord been cut he would have been a ship unmoored, lost and drifting in a vast sea of grief and loneliness. He wouldn’t have survived. 

“Ben?” She stirs beside him, voice heavy, laden with sleep. 

All he has to do is shift his neck and his nose is buried in her hair. It smells sweet from the soaps she had used, and feels silken against the soft skin of his face. Bathing had been cathartic for her after so many weeks of suffering in her own filth, living with blood caked to her skin and under her fingernails. 

“You need to rest,” his voice is muffled in her crown, “You’re still weak.”

She shakes her head, and in a single fluid movement she is straddling his abdomen, eyes alight with want. Her fingers creep over his bare skin appraisingly, “I don’t want to sleep, Ben.” 

“We can’t.” 

She stills above him, noticing something in the dark.

“You’re crying.” Rey slumps forward, her chest flush to his, and traces the planes of his face with deft fingers, thumbs swiping away heavy tears. “Why are you crying?” 

He sucks in a shuddering breath and gathers her closer to him, clutching her to his chest. His fingers curl in the thin fabric of her shift, and his eyes are misty with tears yet unshed. “You almost _died_ , Rey.” 

Her brow furrows, confused. She gazes up at him from where her chin digs into his sternum, “I did. But I’m okay now.”

So nonchalant, like she hadn’t been dancing with death when he found her, bloody lipped and yellow eyed, heaving as her body attempted to turn itself inside out, like he hadn’t nearly lost her. 

“You really don’t understand why it matters, do you?” 

She tilts her head to the side, cutely. Eyes glinting with a sort of curious naivete. 

Ben doesn’t know how to express in words what she means to him, how his world would crumble were she to vanish from it, so he does the next best thing. He tugs her up his chest, cranes his neck at an awkward angle and crushes his lips to her own. 

It has been years since he’s kissed someone; not since he was twenty and a fool for some student at Luke’s academy. A round of spin the lightsaber had won him a kiss which led to a hasty release in a closet, only hands and mouths. It meant nothing. The girl is long dead anyway, and Rey is alive and warm and precious in his arms, under his mouth. 

She moans into the kiss and he deepens it, sloppily. They’re both ill-practiced, and with a gentle probe into her mind Ben discovers that this is Rey’s first kiss. 

_Her first_. Something akin to pride swells in his chest, and his body follows suit. He’s hard in an instant. 

He should take pause, collect himself so he doesn’t frighten her, doesn’t do something that cannot be undone, that they’ll both regret come morning. But, force, does he want her; and what better way is there to _show_ her how much he loves her? Words will only fail him.

Rey rises off of his chest and he helps her to ease the shift over her head. She’s still so thin, ribs still prominent, but not so much as they had been. His hands span the full width of her waist. Not because of her malnourishment, he’s just that much larger than her. Her hips no longer jut like they had, a thin layer of new fat rounds them just so. Soon enough, should their training proceed as planned, it will be lean muscle and sinew that pads her out. All in good time. 

Ben flips them, rolling Rey onto her back so he can hover over her. Her breath is warm and quick on his face, and her eyes are wide with anticipation and anxiety. He presses gently into her mind to see what it is that she wants, and finds that she doesn’t know. Her previous boldness had been fed by a desire to _learn_. Because, despite her innocence, she still felt the burn between her thighs spurred on by his scent and proximity, and knew instinctively that he could sate it. 

That he too is a virgin, he keeps to himself. No need to further fray her nerves when she is already abuzz. At least he understands the mechanics; a life spent wasting away in a junk heap has left Rey woefully uneducated. 

Uncertain as to how he should proceed, Ben chooses the direct route, and strips off his thin sleep pants. Rey blanches. _He’s frightened her, damn it._

Only it isn’t fear that sounds with her voice, but a tantalizing mix of awe and curiosity, “I... does that go inside of me?” 

“Only if you want it to.” He offers with a sheepish smile. She’s never seen a human penis before, hadn’t realized how men and women differed beneath the waist to such a drastic degree. It’s... endearing.

“I think I do.” She rubs her thighs together and then lunges for him, wrapping her arms tight around the back of his neck and pulling him down on top of her. She initiates the kiss this time, learning from his example. She feels no shame at their nudity, one of the few benefits of her seclusion is a lack of any concept of taboo or bodily shame. 

She finds him attractive, he realizes when his finger ghosts her folds and she breaks their kiss with a throaty gasp. She thinks he’s beautiful. The line between their minds has blurred, thoughts mingle and sensations slide. She’s so wet under his touch, pliant. It takes him a moment to find her opening, but when he does it's easy to slip a finger inside. She keens and bucks into his hand, her own knots in his dark hair and drags him down to kiss her again. 

Rey likes kissing, the feel of their mouths crushed together, the press of his tongue past her lips and the accidental scrape of teeth. She likes the wetness and the taste of him on her palate. Rey likes kissing Ben, and that she projects the sentiment onto him spurs him into further action. 

Another finger joins the first, and then another, by then she’s a whimpering mess beneath him. Her calloused hands run over his shoulders and her nails bite into his back and she keens for him, because fingers aren’t enough. 

He relents and rises up over her, peppering kisses across her face. She’s so beautiful, flushed and panting with pupils blown wide in arousal. 

“Are you sure?” He’s already reaching between their bodies to palm himself. He can finish himself off in the ‘fresher if need be, he’s already so close, just from touching her. 

Rey nods vigorously, “Please.” 

Ben aligns himself with her as best he can, his hand shaking and clumsy with nerves, and then presses forward. The fit is tight, and her brow creases with discomfort, but she doesn’t cry out, and he sees no blood as he works his way in with steady, shallow thrusts. It takes all of his will not to finish right then, with her so wet and warm around him. 

Once he has hilted himself he stills, and waits for her reaction. She shifts so that she can press a chaste kiss to his lips, nips playfully at his chin, then hides her face in the crook of his neck. “Alright.”

He starts slow and gentle, as much for himself as for her. He’s so close, and he doesn’t want to soil this memory by finishing before she can. As her breathless pants turn into small, whimpering moans, he picks up his pace. Her nails begin to rake over his shoulders, and her legs raise to wrap around his waist. 

She shifts enough so that she can nip at his earlobe and he curses, stuttering to a halt. He’s going to come if he keeps going. 

“I just,” he gulps as her heels dig into the small of his back, “I just need a minute.” 

Rey drops her head back onto the pillows and gives him a sly, knowing look. She’s seated in his head just as deeply as he is in her own. 

“Here,” she reaches for his hand, and his cock throbs when he notices how he dwarfs her, “Touch me here,” she lowers his fingers to a spot just above the place where they are joined, “It feels _really_ good to be touched here.” 

His fingers make a tentative swirling motion over the bundle of nerves, and Rey sighs. Her walls flutter around him and he slowly begins again, gentle thrusts and gentle circles. 

And then she’s rising with him, panting with each ingress and moaning with each egress. His pace builds, and their frantic breaths form a symphony with the slap of their skin and the thundering of their hearts. 

Closer, closer, closer. Rey writhes under him and Ben jerks over her, his face falls into the crook of her neck and he gasps through his climax, Rey follows shortly behind him; nails dug into his shoulders and ankles locked at the small of his back, she wails, and clenches, drawing his own orgasm out a moment longer before they both collapse. 

There is a moment of heady silence. His head pillowed on her chest. He listens to the rhythmic pounding of Rey’s heart and thanks any gods that may be for the presence of its steady, strong beat. Had he been even a moment late on Chandrila... 

“No.” She whispers, her face pressed to his sweat dampened hair, “Don’t think about that, not now.” 

“I—

Rey silences him with a kiss, hot and fast. It's more teeth than lip, but that hardly matters when she tastes so sweet. 

When they break apart he rolls them onto their sides, Rey facing towards him, cradled to his chest. 

“Do you get it now? Do you understand why it matters, Rey?” His voice quavers again, already he can feel the tears prickling at the corners of his traitorous eyes. Just the thought... That he could have lost her, that this might have never occurred…

“I think I do,” She nuzzles into his chest, voice muffled by flesh and exhaustion. She’s still recovering, he remembers, grimly. 

They shouldn’t have done that when she is still so weak. 

“I love you, too.” 

Her words jar him back into the moment, away from his worry and fear. 

“ _What_?” He hasn’t heard her right, something is— 

“I said that I love you, too.” She yawns into his skin, and settles against him, already drifting. She dozes while he reels.

She.. she said... but he hadn’t... 

He’d implied though, that he loves her. He does, but the words hadn’t been spoken. Apparently he’d had no need for them. Rey already knew. _She knows_. 

And she loves him, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from Tumblr!  
> Link to my blog: [Here](https://dvrkrey.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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